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| '''[[Félix d'Hérelle]]''' (April 25, 1873 – February 22, 1949) was a French-Canadian scientist, who, with only a high-school education, became one of the most accomplished bacteriologists of his day. d'Hérelle is credited with discovering bacteriophages and inventing phage therapy and modern biological pest control. Subsequently, bacteriophages became the model organisms for the studies that spawned much of our knowledge of molecular genetics.<BR><BR>[[Image:Young d'Herelle.jpg|thumb|200 px|Félix d'Hérelle]]
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| ==== Early Years ====
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| D'Hérelle was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of French emigrants. His father, 30 years older than his wife, died when Félix was 6 years old. Following his father's death, Félix, his mother and his younger brother Daniel, moved to Paris. From 7 to 17 years of age, d'Hérelle attended school in Paris, including the lycee. In the fall of 1891, d'Hérelle traveled to Bonn where he attended lectures at the University of Bonn "for several months." Thus, d'Hérelle only obtained a high school education and was self-taught in the sciences.
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| Between 16 and 24, d'Hérelle traveled extensively via money given by his mother. When 16 years old, he started to travel through western Europe on bike. When 17, after finishing school, he traveled through South America. Afterwards, he continued his travels through Europe, including Turkey, where he, at 20 years of age, met his wife, Marie Caire.
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| At age 24, now father of a daughter, d'Hérelle and his family moved to Canada. He built a home laboratory and studied microbiology from books and his own experiments. Through the influence of a friend of his late father, he earned a commission from the Canadian government to study the fermentation and distillation of maple syrup to schnapps. His father's friend shrewdly pointed out that Pasteur "made a good beginning by studying fermentations, so it might be interesting to you, too." He also worked as a medic for a geological expedition to Labrador, even though he had no medical degree or real experience. Together with his brother, he invested almost all his money in a chocolate factory, which soon went bankrupt.
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| During this period, d'Hérelle published his first scientific paper, "De la formation du Carbone par les vegetaux" in the May 1901 issue of ''Le Naturaliste Canadien''. The paper is noteworthy for two reasons: it shows an exceptional level of scientific development for a self-taught scientist and reveals a broad level of interest, namely the global balance of carbon in nature. However, the claims of the paper were in error, as d'Hérelle contended that the results of his experiments indicated that carbon was a compound, not an element.
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| ==== Guatemala and Mexico ====
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| With his money almost gone and his second daughter born, d'Hérelle took a contract with the government of Guatemala as a bacteriologist at the General Hospital in Guatemala City. Some of his work included organizing defenses against the dread diseases of the time: malaria and yellow fever. He also studied a local fungal infection of coffee plants, and discovered that acidifying the soil could serve as an effective treatment. As a side job, he was asked to find a way to make whiskey from bananas. Life in the rough and dangerous environment of the country was hard on his family, but d'Hérelle, always adventurer at heart, rather enjoyed working close to "real life", compared to the sterile environments of a "civilized" clinic. He later stated that his scientific path began on this occasion.
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| In 1907, he accepted an offer from the Mexican government to continue his studies on fermentation. He and his family moved to a sisal plantation near Mérida, Yucatán. Disease struck at him and his family, but in 1909.... ''[[Félix d'Hérelle|(read more)]]''
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The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.
Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
